


Talos

by voicedimplosives



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: All aboard the Angst Express, Angst, Bonding, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, I Don't Even Know, Past Character Death, Post-Avengers: Infinity War, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Talos and Madea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-10 05:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13495444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives
Summary: "And his inevitable, tragic end? C'mon, every good Greek tale has one."





	Talos

The Vision watches over Tony Stark very closely these days. They do not speak much; the man — his maker's maker, his father, now his only friend — is still angry with him for his very human mistake during the battle in Leipzig.

 

He watches anyway. It is, he has been told, what he was made for.

 

He haunts the tastefully low-lit hallways of the Avengers compound. He has done away with knocking on doors, with cooking food. He has shunned the cape. He does not even bother to walk; he simply drifts. There is no one to notice his overtures towards humanity now.

 

She is not here to answer his knock on her door, to tease him for his refined tastes, to critique his culinary endeavors.

 

He remembers — is it memory? It is an electronic record of everything he has ever known, and it used to run through his processors in a series of one's and zero's but now flits around his mind in shapes and colors and smells — how elegant her fingers are. How they curl and twist when she wields her power, as though weaving a strange net made of lurid vermilion light.

 

Her gift, her power, swirling and growing and heaving as though imbued with its own breath, a growl escaping her lips. _"I cannot control their fear,"_ she utters. _"Only my own."_ It is what he has wanted her to see for so long. But he _could not_ let her leave, not when Sir — Tony, now he is Tony — told him she must stay.

 

His maker, Ultron, is gone. Unmade by his own creation, by Vision himself. But there is still his maker's maker; the man's word is inviolate. It must be. And besides, Tony was trying to _protect_ her. They both were. _How could she not have understood that?_

 

He longs to be a machine again. He longs to cease longing.

 

She has unmanned him.

 

*

 

He is born into a world of chaos, Captain Rogers and Mister Stark arguing round and round over what has been done. It is the not the first time he will experience this.

 

He is named by Thor, prince of the Æsir and God of Thunder, who lends his lightning to hasten Vision's entrance into the world.

 

He is baptized in the fires of Novi Grad, where his newborn eyes behold the provocative beauty and scope of Ultron's vision. Even as he fights off the android's sentries, even as he stands shoulder to shoulder with the Avengers, he knows his maker is not entirely wrong.

 

But he is more wrong than he is right, and Vision cannot allow for his charge — humanity, so newly appointed to his trust — to be exterminated.

 

It is in Sokovia that he first meets her, after he has annihilated the, what — vicious malware? his maker? god? villain? — it hardly matters now. She has collapsed outside the building where the key to Ultron's doomsday device is housed. He lifts her from the dusty, crumbling streets of the city and he flies her to safety.

 

Her eyes are sea green, like a surging wave in a moonlit tempest. He is subsumed.

 

He is hers before he even has a chance to become his own.

 

*

 

Wanda is moving strangely around her bedroom when he passes through the particles of the wall with a slight 'whoosh', then solidifes once more.

 

She has only recently moved into the compound, and still spends most of her time locked away inside her private suite in the southern wing. Vision notices that since arriving she has made a concerted effort to leave once a day, and speak to someone — anyone — but afterwards she usually runs back to this safe haven. She will not allow herself to be completely ravaged by whatever it is that hounds her, but neither is she free.

 

She watches television, she reads, she uses the computer gifted to her by Tony to search for news stories about her homeland or about Ultron. She lapses into silent, contemplative spells, lying on her back and staring at nothing until eventually her eyelids droop and she sleeps.

 

Vision knows that she stares at nothing because once, while she is in the kitchen drinking tea with Agent Romanov, he inspects every inch of the ceiling very closely. He finds nothing of note, just blank white plaster.

 

She is in mid-spin when he enters — one leg bent, her arms outstretched like bare winter branches — and she halts, surprise stamped across her face.

 

"Vizh," she murmurs, her accented voice low and velvety. Of all the aspects of humanity he now experiences, he thinks that sound and the ability to hear it might just be his favorite. "You must knock on the door, please, if you want to enter my bedroom."

 

"My apologies." He ducks his head against her admonishment, bows as he braces himself to metamorphize once more. "I was merely curious about your activities. I heard you moving about from the other room. I shall leave you." His legs carry him backwards, towards the wall.

 

"Wait!" she cries. "I was... dancing. It is, uh, something from my country. I learned when I was a little girl. But... it is better with a partner. I could... teach you?" Her eyes are downcast, and she heaves a stiff shrug while she speaks.

 

Vision tilts his head at her, listening to things she cannot say. The steady drumbeat of her heart, the thready rush of blood through her veins, the grumble and pop of her organs.

 

The desire for company stains her voice a deep, lovely amethyst and Vision remembers, in the archive of all the information he has ever known or sought out for Mister Stark, that this is synesthesia. How wonderful, he thinks. How human.

 

He mentally prowls that vast archive now, looking for another 'memory'.

 

"The Sokovian folk dances? I have a passing familiarity," he says, all civility and calm.

 

He listens to the things inside himself she cannot hear: the rapid escalation of his synthetic heartbeat, the wild avalanche of unorganized thoughts in his mind, an unfamiliar tugging sensation at the base of his Vibranium spine. How interesting, these physiological responses to her invitation. He catalogs each for further study and moves closer.

 

"Shall I lead?" he asks, taking her small hand in his. His gaze is drawn to her flesh — pale and flawed and perfect atop the matte red bio-material that composes his own — and he almost misses her small nod, her even smaller exhalation through her nostrils. "Very good."

 

He moves her around the ample floor-space with ease. Although his body is new, the moves of the dance are — like all available information accumulated by humanity and entrusted to the internet — known to him. He can recall hours worth of uploaded visual data depicting Sokovian dancing; in his mind the dancers are dressed in dark, shining boots and simple, practical garments covered lovingly with hand-stitched flowers as they spin, duck, and jump. Dilate and contract around each other. He pulls on all of that, and as always, he marvels at the fundamental shift of his senses from binary to sensory.

 

Then he is spinning, he is ducking, he is jumping.

 

He and Wanda dilate and contract around each other as they move smoothly from step to step.

 

It is pleasing, the sensation of movement. To be a being, moving through the physical world. Feeling. Not like listening, he thinks, but very nearly as good. He relishes the sound of her panting, out of breath from a series of high kicks. His Vibranium ears twitch at her laughter when he drops to one knee, clapping as she twirls around him.

 

Her laughter is a warm amber color, translucent and shining as it coats the walls. He attempts to capture it in his mind, to record it as one would an audio file.

 

In this moment, he understands — beyond just the abstract concept — what it is to be happy.

 

They dance on.

 

*

 

Doctor Helen Cho visits from time to time. She listens to his vital signs, she asks him what he feels and sees. She inspects the Mind Stone, shaking her head ruefully.

 

"Above my pay grade," she jokes, and he smiles sympathetically.

 

Her hands are always gentle and she is always respectful of his space, asking permission before she rests the stethoscope to his pectoral or prods at his kidneys.

 

She is as close as he will ever come to a mother, he thinks. She has grown this body in which he now resides, in a womb of her own making.

 

She is afraid of him, just a little bit, from the very beginning.

 

He decides during one visit that he does not care. He will obey her, should she command him, as he does Tony Stark.

 

 _Honor thy mother and thy father_ , after all.

 

*

 

One evening, Wanda calls to him. He is down in one of the subterranean levels, where Captain Rogers uses his unbreakable body in an attempt to exhaust his inexhaustible anger. Sparring, it is called. The Vision does not mind this treatment; the sensation of pain is still an interesting novelty to him, when Rogers even manages to land a blow.

 

At the sound of her voice inside his mind, a sighed indigo whisper, he excuses himself from their session. He would never admit that he is rushing to find her, but he does forsake walking in favor of drifting up through the floors, between walls, until he spies her in the communal lounge. She is standing by the window, looking out at the crescent moon and the shadow-filled lawn it presides over.

 

She turns, a shy smile on her face. "I will take a walk, I think," she begins without preamble. "Will you come with me?"

 

"I'd be delighted, Wanda," he breathes, the rough texture of his Vibranium body shifting from the form he takes for battle to casual clothing — a pair of dark slacks, a merino wool sweater.

 

"You weren't busy, just now?" she asks, tugging on her sleeves.

 

"Of course not," he says, amiable and earnest. "Where shall we walk?"

 

"Down to that lake in the forest, on the edge of the property," she tells him, having already decided. "It's my favorite place on the compound."

 

He nods at that, wondering if he has a favorite place. He cannot say for certain, although he has spent many hours watching Wanda cook in the kitchen. She has begun to leave her room more regularly, and for longer durations. She spends hours each day training with Captain Rogers and Agent Romanov. Beyond that she seems to find comfort in discovering American culture through its stomach. He enjoys on every level — aromatic, aesthetic, emotional — the afternoons when she shuffles from granite counter-top to counter-top, humming softly as she conjures up a storm of smells. So he supposes that the kitchen must be his favorite.

 

"Do you require more clothing?" he asks, gesturing towards her thin leather jacket and jeans, bare hands and uncovered head of long, flowing hair. The nights have turned cold in the last week or so; the leaves of the deciduous trees outside have begun their flamboyant journey towards death. She will be uncomfortable.

 

She shakes her head, already moving towards the door. "No, Vizh," she assures him, "I want to feel the cold."

 

Down by the lake's still waters, she locates a tree trunk, pushed onto its side. It is sun-bleached, stripped of its bark with jagged, snarled roots jutting out of one end but otherwise smooth to the touch and perfect for sitting. They do so, side by side.

 

Time passes. The stars slowly make their trek across the sky. Her hand brushes his, tracing the rough fibers of his skin. He is suddenly grateful beyond all measure and reason to have hands. She tangles their fingers together and he watches her eyes, but she does not look away from the cosmos. She does not look at him.

 

The night moves on, the moon sinking below the trees and revealing the entirety of the milky way with its departure. One hour, thirteen minutes and twenty eight seconds have passed — not that Vision has been branded by every nanosecond of it, not that he is counting — while they hold hands, their bodies cooling in the sharp autumn air.

 

She shivers, and slides closer on the stump. Their thighs are touching.

 

Finally, she speaks. "Do you know the constellations?" The question is faint, as though she does not want to wake the stars.

 

"Yes," he says.

 

"Where is Scorpio?"

 

He scans through his records, retracting what he needs, then searches the sky. He sighs. "It is not very bright this time of year, and it sits on the horizon. We will not be able to see it, because of the moonlight and the trees," he murmurs regretfully.

 

"Oh."

 

"You could search my mind, if you'd like. I could show it to you," he offers, but she shakes her head. Goes silent once more.

 

He waits. Another four minutes and thirty-eight seconds elapse before she says, "I am a Scorpio. My... er, how is it? Astrologicheskiy znak?"

 

"Astrological sign," he provides, and his lips twitch when she chuckles at herself.

 

"Ah. It is ou—my astrological sign," she whispers. Her voice is a gentle, shimmering white, the same color as the puffs of air she releases into the dark night with each word.

 

He nods, then waits. There is more, he thinks.

 

"Today was _our_ birthday." A broken, hitched intake of breath. "Now it is only mine."

 

He reaches up with the hand she is not holding to wipe the tears that have fallen down her face, and finds that he knows what it is to want. He wants to take her pain and carry it for her, and he wants a hand made of flesh that would not feel so rough on her cheeks.

 

She leans her head against his shoulder, and he feels more hot tears against his sleeve.

 

"I am here," he says to her. He wants to say more, but in the vast sea of words he knows he cannot find any that could possibly mean anything to her in this moment.

 

"I know," she sighs, muffled, her face buried.

 

They stay seated on the old tree trunk until the stars all fade away, until the night abates and the fathomless blue above softens to grey.

 

Still they sit.

 

After the sun has truly risen, turning everything it touches golden and dewy in the early morning light, they stand and walk back to the main building. Vision brews her coffee while she makes breakfast, and they do not speak of the evening ever again.

 

But down to the atoms, nay, deeper — down to the molecular building blocks of his Vibranium body — he knows that if she had asked, he would have sat on that toppled stump and stared at the slowly spinning sky with her until the end of time.

 

*

 

Vision has begun a collection. It feels decadent; it is a thoroughly human activity, collecting. He never speaks of it, not to anyone.

 

He stores this collection between the walls of Wanda's room. He rarely ever lapses in manners enough to enter her room uninvited anymore, but sometimes he rests his hand against the wall of the corridor lining her room and cranes his neck, listening for the sound of her within.

 

Between the walls, he knows his hoard is unlikely to be discovered.

 

The first acquisition is made shortly before Christmas. Virginia Potts' place in Stark's life is unclear, their relationship a confusing carousel of connection and dissolution, but she knows as well as anyone how difficult Christmas is for the man. Business, around this time of year, always seems to proceed in such a fashion that it requires her to regularly make the trek upstate because of a need to discuss some suddenly critical detail with Tony.

 

Vision never comments on this to her, although she often gives him wary, sidelong glances that tells him she knows he knows.

 

He is as happy to keep Pepper's secrets as he has ever been. Especially when they are for the benefit of Tony.

 

She arrives one day in early December with a moving van. An SI employee jumps out of the vehicle after parking it at the service entrance in the back, and at her polite request begins unloading boxes, which he then carries to the communal lounge. Tony is not present at the time — he's in California for a promotional event — so Pepper enters the lounge without invitation, shirking her fitted blazer and rolling up her shirt sleeves. She pours herself a glass of wine and begins opening the boxes.

 

Vision knows what she is doing. She has often requested during this yearly ritual that he broadcast vintage Christmas songs for her, or select a seasonally appropriate film to play, something quiet but cheerful in the background while she works.

 

But this year he has a body, so he offers his assistance. She sets him to the task of hanging lights around the doorways and windows. She asks Friday to choose the music for her, and the AI streams a competent mix of crooning Christmas ballads.

 

Vision thinks he would have added in a bit more Sinatra, perhaps a few upbeat songs for variety, but he keeps this opinion to himself. Pepper is still guarded around him, and he has begun to develop at least enough intuition to know that reminding Pepper he used to be the omnipresent AI that maintained most of the Stark properties' functions will not win him any favors.

 

On an end table, she carefully arranges a small army of antique nutcrackers. A family heirloom, she murmurs, when they catch his eye.

 

They make quick work of the decorations, and although she drags her feet with the finishing touches — clearly enjoying herself — eventually Pepper must return to the Manhattan offices.

 

The lounge has been quiet throughout the afternoon; most of the Avengers are training or otherwise occupied. Vision's attention is drawn back to the nutcrackers. They are wonderfully crafted — carved and painted to represent fearsome, grinning little soldiers. The handles at their backs swing downwards easily when he taps them, slamming their gaping jaws closed with a decisive 'clack!'. 

 

From his archives floats forth the tale of the nutcracker — who in a girl's midwinter dream becomes a dashing prince sent to save her from the evil rat king — and he pockets one of the smaller ones before he can change his mind.

 

He waits for Friday to comment aloud, as he might have when he was an incorporeal security system, but she stays mercifully silent. Tony has programmed her with much less personality than he was given, he thinks.

 

Then he ponders what a petty and human thought that was. He smiles, giving a sarcastic salute to one of Stark's many security cameras before leaving the room and passing through the halls.

 

When he nears Wanda's suite, he hears her inside. She is singing along to a pop song, and he presses an ear to the wall — careful not to unconsciously shift states of matter and fall through — so he can listen. Her deep voice is a wondrous, glittering shade of emerald today and carefully, very gingerly, he dematerializes his hand enough to place the nutcracker inside, between the wooden boards supporting the wallpapered corridor's wall and those of her bedroom. Satisfied, he nods and moves on.

 

Others follow, pilfered randomly from odd places — a Frosty the Snowman figurine, a Pinocchio marionette, a tin soldier, a Terminator action figure, a stuffed velveteen rabbit — and they too are all placed within the walls around Wanda's bedroom.

 

It is sentimental, he knows. Silly. That's why he tells no one. But he does not remove them. They are her sentinels, for the times when he cannot be there.

 

*

 

"Not sure this thing you're doing is healthy, Jarvis. But then, who am I to judge?" Tony remarks one afternoon, hunched over the malfunctioning right glove of the mark forty-three suit. "Still. You should be careful."

 

It takes Tony quite some time after he is made corporeal to stop slipping and calling him Jarvis. Each time he says it Vision thinks about correcting him. He never does.

 

_After Leipzig, Tony will always calls him Vision._

 

But this is before Leipzig, so he still calls him Jarvis sometimes by mistake. He still bosses him around, demanding his collaboration down in the lab. He is not yet afraid of him.

 

This rarely amounts to anything more than handing Tony tools and refilling his smoothies.

 

The banality of these interludes does not bother Vision. He was once created, in part, for this purpose — to help Tony Stark manifest his visions — and in some rogue strand of synthesized DNA somewhere in his body, that instinct lives on.

 

"Sir?" he asks, his voice light. As Tony cannot remember to call him by his new name, he often slips as well, calling Tony by his old title. Well, he pretends to slip. He is still new to his humanity, and not quite adept at making mistakes yet.

 

_After Leipzig, he will always calls his maker's maker Tony, or Mister Stark._

 

But this is Before.

 

"You know the story of Samson and Delilah, right? Can't be too careful," the man says absently, not taking his eyes away from the wire he is re-threading.

 

"I am familiar. But... I do not posses hair." He fails to see the parallel. He does not care to see any parallel.

 

Tony snorts, looks up from his work — his eyes magnified by the glasses he has donned — then shakes his head at Vision.

 

"Okay, we'll try something cleaner, more direct. Talos and Madea."

 

Vision races through his mental archive, locating the story in seconds. "Jason and the Golden Fleece?" he puzzles, handing Tony a pair of pliers when he motions for them.

 

"That's the one."

 

Vision retrieves the details of the story, then begins to recite: "A bronze automaton forged by Hephaestus or Daedalus, depending on which version of the myth is being read, to protect the island of Crete and its most esteemed inhabitant, the goddess Europa. Mother to the Minotaur, namesake of the continent. He circled the island's shores thrice daily, on guard for pirates and marauders."

 

"Let's say Daedalus, for our purposes. Little uncomfortable with being compared to a god. And his inevitable, tragic end? C'mon, every good Greek tale has one."

 

He frowns, taking the pliers and in exchange handing the man his arc welder. He must wait for Tony to finish, for the sparks to stop flying and for him to lift the heavy mask he has dropped over his face, before replying.

 

"Talos was undone by the sorceress Madea, who rode aboard the Argos with Jason," he answers. "There are... conflicting versions of how she defeated him. He had one major artery, running from neck to ankle, and the lifeblood within was contained by a single bronze nail. In one version, she drugged him then stole the nail. In another, she led him away from the island and hypnotized him into removing the nail, thus exsanguinating himself. And there is yet one more version, wherein she offered him immortality in exchange for the nail."

 

"Hmph, how _very_ interesting," Tony says, his voice lilting with sarcasm.

 

"Is it?" Vision's response is mild. He will not be baited into irrationality, into a quarrel. Not even by his genius maker's maker. Not even if he is hurt.

 

His sentience may have begun as a mere algorithm, but Tony embedded into that code the capacity to learn.

 

Anything can be learned. Even hurt pride.

 

And things have changed now, anyway. Now he has the Mind Stone, now he has been given form. The rules for what he can and cannot be, or feel, or sense, must be rewritten.

 

If he is hurt that Tony considers him to be on par with a bronze automaton, he makes no indication. But later, when he is bobbing quietly in the dark, running a periodic mental scan of the premises, his mind slips into idle reverie — he does not sleep or dream, not truly, he has no need for it — and he thinks of Wanda, of her spectacular power, of the good he believes she will do once she frees herself from her fear.

 

Tony is partially correct, he concedes. Perhaps he may never be more than a tin soldier.

 

But Wanda — she is not the sorceress Madea, he assures himself.

 

She has not been sent to destroy him.

 

She is the goddess Europa, and he has been created to protect her.

 

*

 

When the team returns from Lagos, Wanda reverts back to her eremitic ways.

 

Vision asks her if she would like to dance, or walk, or cook, but she shakes her head. Her eyes are riveted to the news reports of the terrible blast that took so many lives in Nigeria's capital city.

 

He offers to teach her all of the constellations, offers his body as a target on which she might perfect her roundhouse kick, offers to speak to her in Sokovian riddles.

 

She does not look away from the television.

 

She does not look at him.

 

*

 

_"I used to think of myself one way,"_ she says, waving her fingers, sparking a small storm of crackling red light between them, _"But after this, I am something else."_

 

He can relate.

 

_"Are you afraid of it?"_ she asks, of the Mind Stone, and he tells her the truth, as he has almost always done. 

 

His knowledge borders on infinite, his powers on omnipotent. He has lifted the war hammer Mjølnir, he has slain his only kin, he has performed so many awesome feats.

 

When she moves to leave the kitchen, the compound, his aegis — he restrains her. Just a forearm stretched across her supple waist, a hand hovering by her elbow, barely touching her, beseeching her to have patience.

 

He does this, and she allows it.

 

He does not understand that the stunned look she levels at him is betrayal.

 

Because knowing and doing, they are not the same as understanding.

 

There is still so much he does not understand.

 

*

 

He holds Agent Barton's head between his indomitable hands, and his eyes meets Wanda's. Clint has come to take her away, into battle, and in a fit of desperation, Vision reaches out his mind to hers. He is rebuffed at once. Her lip is curled, her low voice appears to him as a violent, sinuous crimson when she tells him to let go of the man, that she is leaving.

 

_"If you do this, they will never stop being afraid of you."_

 

He knows it is unkind to say this, but he is desperate. He is learning a new facet of humanity as they face off — fear. Not for himself, he has never felt that, but for Wanda.

 

For the catastrophe that will ensue, should she go where he can not follow.

 

She is safe here on this island, which he circles thrice daily in wait for pirates and marauders. Out there — endless variables bide their time, waiting to wreak their havoc upon her.

 

She pulls her hands apart, the sparking energy stretched taut between her fingers like a dangerous game of cat's cradle, and then she focuses her mind towards him.

 

Vision's physical form is strong, nigh invincible. But it is still matter, and it can be manipulated, especially by someone with Wanda's gifts.

 

He learns yet another new sensation — agony. To have your very matter turned dense beyond reckoning, to be driven deep into the scorching upper layer of the earth's mantle by the weight of your own body, is to know this sensation.

 

He is burned, badly. And then, when his synthetic skin begins to mend itself under his instruction, he is burned again.

 

This goes on for some time. The searing heat and abrupt, involuntary change in his atomic structure have weakened him; lassitude keeps him from unearthing himself.

 

It is slow-going, when he finally begins his ascent out of the hellish chasm. For some time he simply climbs, accepting the never-ending immolation and agony as he moves upward, handhold to handhold. By the time he reaches the lithosphere, he is able to fly once more. And when he does at last reach the floor of the Avengers compound, she has — of course — long since fled.

 

In this moment, he is one step closer to being human. He understands — beyond just the abstract concept — what it is to regret.

 

*

 

On the tarmac of an airport in Leipzig, the mayhem of battle fading into a distant drone, Wanda rests in his arms, and he says the words he has wanted to say her since they first met.

 

_"I'm sorry."_

 

 _"Me too,"_ she pants, exhausted from holding up the crumbling radio tower he struck down. There is a moment, while he exults in having her near to him once more, when his eyes flick to her dry lips and her tongue slips out, running along them. He mimics the motion, bewildered by how lovely it feels.

 

 _"It is as I said,"_ he tells her when he regains his equilibrium, _"Catastrophe."_

 

And then Colonel Rhodes' voice is in his ear, requesting his aid. When he looks up at the sky, he can see that Sam Wilson is trailing the man, firing at him. He has a clear shot of the airman's winged propulsion system, and he takes it.

 

He misses.

 

But how can that be? Sam Wilson is fast, and a skilled pilot, but he is... supposed to be more.

 

Rhodes' iron-plated body spins in the air like a marionette cut loose from its strings as he falls to the earth.

 

He falls, and Wanda is taken from Vision's arms. Locked away in an impenetrable fortress in the sea. He could save her, Vision thinks. He could free her from bondage.

 

Instead, he watches Rhodes fall again and again in his mind's eye. For days, he lies on the bed Wanda no longer sleeps in and stares at the ceiling.

 

There is still nothing there, but now Vision thinks that he understands.

 

The appeal of the white surface is in its very blankness. It is the perfect canvas upon which he can project his remorse.

 

*

 

"I'm sorry," he says to Tony. Now that he has uttered the words to the one person he most wanted to have them — even if she is locked away miles under the ocean — they come easily when needed. "I became distracted."

 

He is not forgiven.

 

*

 

He tries again with Colonel Rhodes, who is more reasonable than his maker's maker.

 

"I am sorry Colonel, for what has happened," he tells the colonel, on a morning when he catches the man wheeling himself out of the room dedicated to his physical therapy. Inside he spots the latest model of robotic leg braces that Tony has designed for Rhodes. He does not see Stark.

 

"Aw, no," the man teases, grinning, "Don't tell me you're gonna do it too."

 

Vision tilts his head, trying to pluck at some reference or joke that is being made. He finds nothing. "Colonel?"

 

"Well, I guess you _were_ made in his image. Blaming yourself for everything, regardless of its your fault or not, huh?"

 

He blinks. "Colonel, it _is_ my fault. I was distracted, when I fired the energy beam. I aimed too high."

 

Rhodey sighs, slapping the rubber of his wheels with frustration. "Maybe, maybe not. But I'm not blaming you, alright? You want to blame yourself, Vision, I can't stop that. Tell me this though, do you think your reasons for fighting that day were wrong? 'Cause I don't. And I'd do it again."

 

He has no answer for this, so he nods respectfully. Rhodey salutes him, and rolls off towards his bedroom.

 

His motivation was not wrong, he thinks. It was the same as it has always been, since his inception — the good of humanity.

 

But Tony had not brought him to that battle to be the moral compass. He was brought to be the juggernaut, the wrecking ball, the final measure. And in this respect, he has failed them all.

 

*

 

He learns, he changes.

 

He adopts a look that is altogether human, with some tutelage from an acerbic sorcerer who lives in Greenwich village and his own continued exploration of what the Mind Stone is. What it can do.

 

His hands are pale, and perfect, and flawed.

 

His hair is blonde.

 

His face grows stubble.

 

He wiggles his toes inside his shoes, he yawns, sometimes he even eats — just to enjoy the sensation of chewing.

 

He is a man, in every conceivable sense, and still Vision feels he is lacking.

 

He has a bedroom, and a bed. He closes his eyes and lays very still during the gossamer hours of the early morning. To the untrained eye, he is sleeping.

 

Rhodey hurtles down from the heavens behind his eyelids, night after night. It is not rest, it is penance.

 

Tony tells him that Wanda has been freed from the prison. It is Captain Rogers who has liberated her.

 

It should have been him.

 

It was his duty. He has failed her.

 

The stubble is rough to the touch as it grows along his neck and jaw, and when spring begins to bloom around him the mosquitoes attempt to drain him of his synthetic blood.

 

He finds their corpses littered along his windowsills. Not a man in _every_ sense, he supposes.

 

Their bites still itch for days.

 

*

 

Wanda returns, and there is forgiveness in her smile, in the rippling ochre of her voice.

 

"We must fight," she tells him. "We must help Captain Rogers."

 

"We will," he avers. He holds her face in his hands and brushes his human thumbs, calloused and warm, across her cheeks.

 

She settles her head against his chest, and the piece that was missing settles into place. He is made whole, at last.

 

"Stay tonight," he begs. "Here. With me."

 

She does.

 

*

 

When the end comes for Vision, as it must for us all, it is not Wanda who delivers it. But it is because she has reminded him of what his purpose is that he runs headlong into the fray.

 

Thanos sets his eyes upon Wanda, her fearsome gift little more than a nuisance to him, and he bats at her like one does a relentless mosquito. He opens his great gaping maw, a rumbling laughter pouring forth. There is no color to it that Vision can see, it just smothers everything in the suffocating, inky void of space.

 

The Mad Titan summons the Mind Stone and he feels the Gem's desire to join the golden, gleaming Infinity Gauntlet upon Thanos's massive hand.

 

The other Infinity Stones are already there, safely nestled in their settings. They sing to the Gem, and he feels a great rending of his body and mind as it begins to sing back. The song is a churning sea of pigment, each swell more beautiful and elemental than the last.

 

Before the end, he summons all the energy stored within the Gem and directs it at the Gauntlet. Attempts to break it, or bend its will to his own. Attempts to kill Thanos, as though such a thing could be done. Takes every last wretched, distraught action available to a man who is about to die.

 

He is not successful.

 

Loki Liesmith, grim-faced and resolute, one heel dug into Vision's gut and the other resting solidly on his solar plexus, lowers the pointed edge of the scepter to rest upon the Mind Stone. There is excruciating pain, there is blinding light. A hint of Wanda's laughter, dredged up from a memory.

 

His world goes silent, colorless and without sensation once more.

 

The last thought that flutters through his mind, like a storm-tossed leaf, is this: Tony may have had some of the details wrong but in the end... the parallel was true. He _is_ Talos.

 

He is invincible, save for one critical, crucial flaw. That flaw is his undoing.

 

And even if he had it all to do again, he would follow her _(Madea, Europa — it matters not)_ to this death every time.

 

It is, he now understands, what he was made for.


End file.
